Happy Birthday!

.

Did you ever have one of those conversations where someone says something that leaves you stumped for an answer, and then an hour, or maybe a day later the perfect reply pops into your head, only by now it's way too late to say it? That happened to me recently, only I'm a bit slower than most. I had my 'Eureka!' moment but the conversation took place seventeen years ago.

"Ah-ha!" I thought. "That's what I should have said!"

The conversation was with an Anglican Bishop in Brisbane. We were talking about internet predators and the presence of evil on the intertube. I was saying that there seemed to me to be a whole lot of activity on the 'evil' side, but no sign of God or his angels, and could the Bishop perhaps have a word?

"But," said the Bishop, with a professionally seraphic smile, "has it occurred to that God might already be there?"

I was stumped. It was such a bald statement of faith from someone with the right credentials to make it that I dried up. Couldn't say a word. There was something missing, I could tell, but what it was I couldn't put my finger on. Until two weeks ago. When the stunning reply came. (I may be slow, but I get there in the end)

"No. God wasn't in the internet from the beginning. It wasn't part of the whole omnipresence thing. God has a mechanism for things like the web. He works through localised centres of consciousness and spiritual grace. These are called people."

I was well chuffed, but it was probably too late to ring up and say "Ah-ha!" Besides which the acronym, L.C.O.C.A.S.G doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. So I tucked it away with all the other brilliant things I never said. Until I got an email from a friend which tells the story of two L.C.O.C.A.S.Gs/people. One is one of the finest men I've ever known, proving it's what you do that best shows what you are. The other is a young lady who really knows how to make an entrance.

XX@yahoo.com-to-ldk@blah.com

Picture the scene:

South east Queensland, tropical deluge. Heavily gravid wife starts "pottering" at 2:30 am. "Do we need to take you to the hospital?" "Nah, I'm fine"

4:00 am. The rain is coming down, going back up twelve feet, then coming down again. "I'm a bit uncomfortable" "How often are you uncomfortable" "About once every 40 minutes. It's probably on today. Hours to go, though."

5:00 am. The rain is letting up so that more, heavier rain can come. The sky is lightening. "No worries, devoted husband - we'll get the boy to before- school-care and keep going on to the hospital. Laughing"

6:05 am. Rain is down to a Queensland drizzle (high chance of drowning). "It's uncomfortable every half hour or so, for about ten seconds" "OK, everyone in the car"

6:10 am. Rain eases. "Uncomfortable" suddenly goes from every 30 minutes to every three minutes. "Uncomfortable" seems be becoming "Quite Uncomfortable".

6:11 am. Brisbane northside traffic goes into total gridlock. Dutiful husband's eyes widen, ever so slightly. Driving becomes a tad assertive. Boy is told we're going straight to hospital - he's got the day off school. Happy lad returns to playing portable game console.

7:30 am. Rain is now blatter. What should have been a 35 minute off-peak/50 minute peak car trip to the hospital is now well over the hour mark and dead slow. Second alarmed phone call is made to maternity ward. "Quite uncomfortable" has become "Ohmypherkingod", and is occurring at a rate that would scare a thrash drummer on ephedrine.

7:36 am. Car suddenly veers out of line of line of traffic to the side of Jubilee Terrace, Red Hill. Dutiful husband leaps from vehicle and goes to passenger side. A remote midwife barks very useful instructions out of the mobile phone.

7:38 am. Bellowing wife and dutiful husband bring Emiliana Catherine into the world. (Huzzah!)

7:41 am. Dutiful husband ties off umbilicus with a shoe lace.

7:48 am. Ambulance that had been despatched by hospital arrives at the side of Jubilee Terrace (it had been caught in traffic, too).
Mother and daughter doing beautifully. Father (having been treated like a minor god in the maternity ward) now at home and eyeing the vodka bottle in a remorseless fashion.

Does anybody know a good car detailer?

.o0o.

PS: Congratulations Mum!

.o0o.
.

Full speed ahead and torp the damn pedoes!

..

My last blog was an open letter to Senator Stephen Conroy, asking, nay, imploring his Ministerial-ness to give up the misguided and ill-conceived Internet Censorship Behemoth. Recently I received a pdf file in reply outlining what the Minister will be doing which is basically ‘Full speed ahead!’, and ignoring my concerns. No surprises there.

Since then I’ve tracked down the email addresses of every Government Senator and MHR and informed them of my opposition to the ‘Damn-Fool-Scheme-That-Should-Have-Never-Got-Past-The-Idea-Stage’, and that I would be voting against the government in the Senate at the coming election. But, to paraphrase Bob Menzies, it’s easy for politicians to ignore a few emails, until they get a few thousand on the same subject. So here’s your opportunity to give the Government a few thousand of yours.

Below is the list. The only address I don’t have is Kevin’s.

Feel free to email these people. An email titled,

A Senate Vote you will lose at the next election.

I will be voting against the Labor government in the Senate at the coming election because I am opposed to Senator Conroy’s unworkable, ill-advised Internet Censorship Legislation. I will be encouraging everyone I can to do the same until the legislation is scrapped.

Your sincerely, etc

Probably would grab their attention. Feel free to cut and paste.

In the meantime I’ve been thinking about predatory internet users and a conversation I had with a Bishop some years back. I’ll be publishing a blog on that soon, right here.

senator.arbib@aph.gov.au,
senator.bilyk@aph.gov.au,
senator.bishop@aph.gov.au,
senator.carol.brown@aph.gov.au,
senator.cameron@aph.gov.au,
senator.carr@aph.gov.au,
senator.collins@aph.gov.au,
senator.evans@aph.gov.au,
senator.crossin@aph.gov.au,
senator.conroy@aph.gov.au,
senator.farrell@aph.gov.au,
senator.faulkner@aph.gov.au,
senator.feeney@aph.gov.au,
senator.forshaw@aph.gov.au,
senator.furner@aph.gov.au,
senator.hogg@aph.gov.au,
senator.hurley@aph.gov.au,
senator.hutchins@aph.gov.au,
senator.ludwig@aph.gov.au,
senator.lundy@aph.gov.au,
senator.mcewen@aph.gov.au,
senator.mclucas@aph.gov.au,
senator.marshall@aph.gov.au,
senator.moore@aph.gov.au,
senator.obrien@aph.gov.au,
senator.polley@aph.gov.au,
senator.pratt@aph.gov.au,
senator.sherry@aph.gov.au,
senator.stephens@aph.gov.au,
senator.sterle@aph.gov.au,
senator.wong@aph.gov.au,
senator.wortley@aph.gov.au

Julia.Gillard.MP@aph.gov.au,
Tony.Zappia.MP@aph.gov.au,
D.Adams.MP@aph.gov.au,
A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au,
Arch.Bevis.MP@aph.gov.au,
James.Bidgood.MP@aph.gov.au,
Sharon.Bird.MP@aph.gov.au,
Chris.Bowen.MP@aph.gov.au,
David.Bradbury.MP@aph.gov.au,
Anna.Burke.MP@aph.gov.au,
Tony.Burke.MP@aph.gov.au,
Mark.Butler.MP@aph.gov.au,
Anthony.Byrne.MP@aph.gov.au,
Jodie.Campbell.MP@aph.gov.au,
Nick.Champion.MP@aph.gov.au,
Darren.Cheeseman.MP@aph.gov.au,
Jason.Clare.MP@aph.gov.au,
Julie.Collins.MP@aph.gov.au,
Greg.Combet.MP@aph.gov.au,
S.Crean.MP@aph.gov.au,
Michael.Danby.MP@aph.gov.au,
Yvette.D'Ath.MP@aph.gov.au,
Bob.Debus.MP@aph.gov.au,
Mark.Dreyfus.MP@aph.gov.au,
Justine.Elliot.MP@aph.gov.au,
Annette.Ellis.MP@aph.gov.au,
Kate.Ellis.MP@aph.gov.au,
Craig.Emerson.MP@aph.gov.au,
Laurie.Ferguson.MP@aph.gov.au,
Martin.Ferguson.MP@aph.gov.au,
J.Fitzgibbon.MP@aph.gov.au,
Peter.Garrett.MP@aph.gov.au,
Steve.Georganas.MP@aph.gov.au,
Steve.Gibbons.MP@aph.gov.au,
Gary.Gray.MP@aph.gov.au,
Sharon.Grierson.MP@aph.gov.au,
Alan.Griffin.MP@aph.gov.au,
Damian.Hale.MP@aph.gov.au,
Jill.Hall.MP@aph.gov.au,
Chris.Hayes.MP@aph.gov.au,
Julia.Irwin.MP@aph.gov.au,
Sharryn.Jackson.MP@aph.gov.au,
Harry.Jenkins.MP@aph.gov.au,
Mike.Kelly.MP@aph.gov.au,
Duncan.Kerr.MP@aph.gov.au,
Catherine.King.MP@aph.gov.au,
Kirsten.Livermore.MP@aph.gov.au,
JMacklin.MP@aph.gov.au,
Richard.Marles.MP@aph.gov.au,
R.McClelland.MP@aph.gov.au,
Maxine.McKew.MP@aph.gov.au,
Bob.McMullan.MP@aph.gov.au,
D.Melham.MP@aph.gov.au,
John.Murphy.MP@aph.gov.au,
Belinda.Neal.MP@aph.gov.au,
Shayne.Neumann.MP@aph.gov.au,
Brendan.O'Connor.MP@aph.gov.au,
Julie.Owens.MP@aph.gov.au,
mparke.mp@aph.gov.au,
Graham.Perrett.MP@aph.gov.au,
Tanya.Plibersek.MP@aph.gov.au,
Rogerpricemp@aph.gov.au,
Don.Randall.MP@aph.gov.au,
Bonner.eo@aph.gov.au,
Bernie.Ripoll.MP@aph.gov.au,
Amanda.Rishworth.MP@aph.gov.au,
Nicola.Roxon.MP@aph.gov.au,
Janelle.Saffin.MP@aph.gov.au,
Bill.Shorten.MP@aph.gov.au,
Sid.Sidebottom.MP@aph.gov.au,
Stephen.Smith.MP@aph.gov.au,
Warren.Snowdon.MP@aph.gov.au,
Jon.Sullivan.MP@aph.gov.au,
Wayne.Swan.MP@aph.gov.au,
Mike.Symon.MP@aph.gov.au,
Lindsay.Tanner.MP@aph.gov.au,
Craig.Thomson.MP@aph.gov.au,
Kelvin.Thomson.MP@aph.gov.au,
Chris.Trevor.MP@aph.gov.au,
Jim.Turnour.MP@aph.gov.au,
Maria.Vamvakinou.MP@aph.gov.au


.

Dear SC, About Christmas..

.
On 16th December 2009 Senator Stephen Conroy announced that the Government will push forward with legislation for mandatory internet filtering, including a secret list of banned and blocked websites.

Senator Stephen Conroy
PO Box 1067
Epping MDC
VIC 3076

Dear Senator Conroy,

I am a Labor voter who will be voting against you in the next election, and I thought you should know why.

When you dumped Telstra's arrogant attempt to bully the government on Broadband rollout I cheered. Senator Stud-Muffin, I called you, on this very blog. A strong-willed politician who can see that the principle is the thing. That big bullies shouldn’t get to decide for everyone what we have access to. It was a victory for principle, and for the smaller players against an arrogant monopoly.

Now you are the arrogant monopoly, deciding what we can or can't access. The rest of us Australians are the small players who want a fair-go, a free choice, access to the world on our own terms. No doubt you won’t see it but you’re no different than the Chinese government deciding for their citizens whose voices they hear, whose opinions they listen to. Censorship is censorship. There is no real difference. Just a matter of degree. And there are some important things you’ve lost sight of here.

1: The internet isn’t a one way thing.

We don’t just slurp down content like watching TV. We can have a go ourselves. We can say stuff, write stuff, email stuff. We can Blog and Facebook and Tweet. We can rave, rage, conspire, confabulate and clown-around on the thing. WE GET TO BE HEARD! We may not ever get much of a following. We may know that most of the time we’re pissing into the wind. But we also know that someone out there may be listening to us. That someone on the other side of the world can hear what we think, WITHOUT GOVERNMENTS COMING BETWEEN US.

We all know that censorship, ANY government censorship, eats away at our chance to have a say on things. We’re not dummies. We can see a principle being undermined here. And we don’t bloody like it.

2: The internet isn’t for children.

It’s for adults. It’s a grown-up thing. If people allow their children to play in the road they have to take responsibility for them. The alternative, as you propose it, is to treat us all like children. WHICH IS WRONG! This is just plain stupid with a capital STOO.. You don’t turn off the TV at 9.30 and all go to bed if you have a three year-old in the house. The adults get to stay up later and decide for themselves what they want to do. And it’s up to us (parents, we’re called) to set the rules for our children. NOT YOU. NOT OUR NEIGHBOURS. NOT, ESPECIALLY NOT, THE BLOODY GOVERNMENT.

3: We can’t trust the government to do what’s right because governments change.

Doesn't matter who we vote for, we don't want the government deciding what we can see, think, read or do. Your promises about fairness and good intentions are worthless. Not because you aren't genuine, but because you won't hold the job for more than a few years. After that who knows? Barnaby Joyce? Tony Abbott? How fair and unbiased will they be?

On abortion, or sex education or birth-control. On left-leaning political websites. On any of the religious right's agenda.

There is nothing to stop some lunatic demagogue blarneying his way into power and then screwing due process, democracy, and civil and political rights over, time and again. YOU KNOW THAT. IT GOES ON ALL THE TIME. And get this: WE AREN’T IMMUNE FROM IT.

That’s the great thing about democracy as a form of government. It demands that people get involved and stay involved to stop the loonies from taking over the asylum. Otherwise you end up like the Americans, with George W Bush, ‘Mr 49% of the vote’ plunging the world into needless wars and sending the global economy down the shitter. And we’re stuck with that because of John Bloody Howard, the Deputy Dawg of the southern hemisphere. And didn’t that just work out fabulously well? To coin a phrase -

Eternal vigilance is the price of peace of mind.

Wake-up to yourself. We don't want censorship.
We don't trust big government of either political colour.
None of us. So, back off. Think again.

You will lose on this.

You will lose votes, credibility
and your political future.

We didn't elect you because you're better at deciding what we see than we are. Admit it, you're no genius on IT issues. It isn’t possible to control the technology. You don’t have that power. The technology evolves faster than any policy you can develop. Except one policy, that is:

Allowing individuals to decide for themselves.

Go after the pedophiles another way. Attack problem gambling another way. Sort out whatever social problem you think needs sorting, but do it another way. This way won't work. It can’t work. And it smothers free speech.

I will be voting Green in the senate next election. Not because they are a viable alternative government, God knows. But there is no alternative. I can’t vote for the Lib-Nat troglodytes and now I can’t vote for you. If you don’t listen to the deafening roar of disapproval from all sides on this and back down. If you cling to the old “let ‘em register their dissent at the ballot box” line of bullshit, we will. Do you hear that? WE WILL.

Ask Kevin how he feels about that. About not getting a Senate majority from a double-dissolution. Ask him. I think he’ll be less than pleased. Considerably so. Air-turning-blue from expletives undeleted, less than pleased. Pissed-off, browned-off, shat-off, fucked-off, less than pleased. Doing nasty things to people who fucked it up for him, less than pleased. You know what he’s like when he doesn’t get his own way.

Currently he’s looking at Tony Abbott leading the Liberals into complete oblivion as his Christmas present. Do you want to be the one who fucks that up? Because this issue will do it. The Emissions Trading Scheme is a dog and we all know it. But we’ll still vote for you and hope it can be sorted later. There’s a lot of things you’re doing in that category. But this isn’t one of them. This is REALLY gonna fuck it up for you. Because we all of us, no matter what colour, creed or party, don’t want the government censoring us.

Have a Merry Christmas.

Lee Kear, aka Angry of Mayfair.

.

God on his side, lucky us.

.

By a strange quirk of fate, politics and faith I’m a member of the same church congregation as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd: St John The Baptist Anglican Church in Canberra. By a stranger quirk I was previously a member of Kevin Rudd’s previous congregation, St John The Baptist Anglican Church in Brisbane. He was also my local member. The PM’s religiosity, however, is no comfort to me. His conservative, right-wing views give me spiritual indigestion. He once described himself as a very simple Christian, entirely happy with orthodoxy, never wanting to question too deeply the strange mixture of myth, wish-fulfilment, and historical excrescence that is the Anglican creed. The fact of 2,000 years of tradition determined entirely by men, and partly by ruthless church politics, (and heresy trials, witch-hunts, inquisitions and torture) is enough for him. To be saved, to be justified, all he has to do is believe, just swallow it all with the wafer and the wine.

Unfortunately that tends all too often to a belief, no matter what his actions, that he has God on his side. He’s rapidly becoming a colourless zealot, a pale and purposeful prophet of self-righteousness. There is in this PM no question as to God’s superiority over man, and therefore Authority’s right to rule over people. When the ACT local government passed a law allowing gay marriage the Howard government moved to strike down the law without hesitation. When Labor took power a year and a half ago the progressive ACT government passed the laws again, expecting more tolerance and concern for equal rights from Rudd. They were disabused of this notion quick-smart. Marriage is for straight couples who make babies only. No procreation, no legislation. Out it went.

I was somewhat more hopeful when the ACT government tried again a month ago, framing legislation that allowed “gay and lesbian couples to create their civil partnerships through a legally-binding ceremony before friends and family.” The bill was innocuous enough, having all the legal rights of straight marriages but being distinctly separate from the laws applying to straight marriages. It couldn’t therefore be struck down by the Federal Government as contravening the Marriages Act.

But that wasn’t good enough for the right-wing Australian Christian Lobby. They lobbied the Federal Attorney General who put pressure on the ACT government. Changes will be made. The civil unions can still be registered and have similar rights to ‘married’ couples. But no ceremony will be allowed. Licensed civil celebrants will not have the power to make any ceremony they conduct automatically registered with the ACT Registry. That will have to be done separately, by lodging paperwork and paying a fee to the Registrar. In short, no ‘marriage’ of the legal and the ceremonial, the official and the spiritual. You’re only fags and lesbians, after all. And presumably the spawn of Satan.

Kevin Rudd was once called ‘Harry Potter’ for his humourless policy-wonk approach to debate and discussion. But he’s far more the ‘be head-boy and teachers-pet at all costs’ intellectual snob than his bespectacled alter-ego. I’ve also very nearly had a gutful of his policy-poor practical politics; his arrogant, workaholic bully-boy work style and his condescending bore-you-to-death-with-the-details method of steamrolling all opposition to his ideas, no matter how dull they may be. His drive to impose his right-wing, knee-jerk opinions framed as ineluctable truth is unfortunately only too effective in the Labor Party. Never a party over-endowed with first-class minds at any time Kevin can cow them with words and bluff them with the ultimate weapon, success. He is every inch, “A parish Demagogue.” As Shelley said of Christ himself.


Now the Liberal Party, in a danse-macabre of self-immolation, has selected, almost by accident, another zealot. Tony ‘the Mad Monk’ Abbot, a man whose name is only too indicative of his Catholic faith. Rudd has taken the Labor Party to the right, his faith a prime mover in this pilgrim’s progress. Abbot will, without any doubt, drag the Liberal Party even further to the right than it’s motley of “the sky isn’t falling” climate sceptics, it’s union-bashers and knee-jerk boot-boys could have ever dreamed possible under than the late but unlamented John Howard, their still-not-quite-dead silverback alpha-chimp.

It’s hard to know where to start with Abbot. He has been so unlikely a candidate that I’ve barely given him much thought, so obvious is his unsuitability for leadership. A failed seminarian of the Cardinal Pell Catholic mafia, a boot-in-mouth Howard apologist, and consummate party head-kicker. No doubt these qualities will heal all divisions, mend all broken hearts, and bring an air of sweetness and light to his parliamentary colleagues. The odour of sanctity, no less.

Elsewhere, the prevailing wisdom seems to be that he will lead the Liberals to their worst election defeat of all time. In his slightly stunned press conference following his election Abbot quoted Paul Keating when talking about the Emissions Trading Scheme:

"'If you don't understand it, don't vote for it. If you do understand it, you'd never vote for it."

I pray to Gods both Anglican and Catholic that this will apply to the Liberal Party too.

.

PS: this man was last seen wandering the corridoors of Parliament House in a confused condition. Can you help identify him?
.

The Forgotten Generation.

.

.

It’s a difficult building. A cube basically, but with late Victorian columns astride the entrance, and windows of genteel Georgian dimensions. It sits like a toad on its plinth and glances sideways down to City Hall across the hard-baked tarmac of Turbot Street. In front broad steps cascade down to san uneven treet level, giving it an attempt at grandeur that doesn’t quite come off, it being the basic squared-off lump that it is.

It’s the Brisbane Dental Hospital. And it’s sat there oozing the smell of disinfectant, fear and pain, and the occasional whiff of nitrous oxide into the heat outside its thick walls for decades. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. But the vile things I know went on there in the 60s and 70s have a reach that exceeds the grasp of polite conversation. And everywhere I go it’s there somewhere waiting for me to ask the question, to turn the key again.

For more than a year now I’ve been here in Canberra with the Lady Colette learning how to love again. She’s a very organised woman is my darling and she lines up the things I need to make this new life, ready for me to hammer them into the ground and tie off the ropes. Today we went to the dentist. She had an appointment booked and I’ve been nursing a sore tooth for a while, never having been one to rush to the dentist’s chair. So she organised, and I fell into step, and off we went together.

The dentist, Dr Hartford, turns out to be a talker and he gives me the history of one hundred years of dentistry as he thinks aloud and invades my mouth with rubber gloves. He’s from Brisbane originally, he tells me, having heard from Colette that I’m from there, and he trained, but of course, at the Dental Hospital. It’s a moment, you might say, and I’m trapped there with the bib round my neck and the smiling nurse beaming inanely and this man’s gentle, practised hands in my face.

I think about it for a while, five, maybe ten minutes while he talks and scrapes and wedges and takes the tiny x-rays. But I know I’m going to ask. Because there’s dread inevitability and surgically clean surroundings, and a fresh new piece of it waiting to be bitten off and chewed over, right here in this bright little room with the pictures of bears and puppies on the wall to reassure the children who come here.

“You were at the Dental Hospital in the sixties. Do you by any chance remember a dental technician by the name of Bill Harris?”

“No. No, I don’t think so. I do remember one technician though, tall, red-haired, name of Ray something. Can’t recall his last name. He was very good to work with. He.. Well you’ve got kids, how old’s you’re daughter?”

“She’s twenty-two.”

“Well, you know how it is. When you’ve got kids you take a sort of fatherly interest in kids that age, with their friends and so on..”

I nod carefully, mouth full of professional silverware.

“Well, Ray was like that, really fatherly, always ready to help the younger staff, always took an interest, that sort of thing. He was a really nice man. What was his name? It’s going to drive me mad..”

Mouth full of ironmongery I’m all ears. I’m waiting for the shoe to drop. It’s quite fascinating. There’s something horrible coming, something wicked this way bound. It’s obvious and palpable, and there’s no problem at all. It’s just about to arrive, that’s all. Just getting ready to step out onto the stage and say ‘Ta-daah!’.

Behind his blue paper mask Dr Hartford’s mouth is forming the necessary shapes.

“His son studied there and became a dentist. He opened a surgery on the north-side, in Wilston or the Grange, on Sandgate Road, I think it was, can’t recall now.”

He pauses for effect, stops tinkering with the tools, and looks me in the eye.

“Of course now he’s in jail. He was sedating young boys in his surgery and interfering with them.”

He gives me the hard look.

Bingo. There it is. Hartford’s moved on, explaining about the unpleasant and expensive things my teeth require. Professional, capable, clinically clean. But it’s out now. Simple. No drama. Just a sentence or two launched into the ether through his hygienic blue mask. And it’s been so clear, so necessary, so bloody necessary.

Afterward Colette is waiting for me, solicitous and tender. I’m brittle and clipped, paying the bill, arranging the next appointment. Inside I’m building a head of steam. When we’re outside I open the valve.

“For fuck’s sake! I fucking hate this. Everywhere I fucking go this shit jumps out at me. It never fucking ends. I’ll be glad when this is written and out of me. Shit. Shit. Shit!”

We cross the road and find my car parked under a tree. I lean against it, hands in pockets, spitting anger. I tell the lady about the conversation I’ve just had.

“Of course he’s from fucking Brisbane. Shit! The thing that drives me nuts about all this? It’s never just one man abusing one child, it’s never just one brutal bit of bastardry on its own. That’s what people never get. That’s what they never think about. It’s a stinking little piece of nastiness that spreads out like an infection. It goes on and fucking on, infecting people’s lives and families and the whole fucking thing just pops its nasty little head up whenever it finds enough room, enough dark little patch of.. Oh for fuck’s sake!”

I’m kicking the tyres on my own car. Angry, exhausted by the long, long drag of the chain, the clarity of thought, the endless awareness of evils done, and passed on from generation to generation. These are the sins of the father that get visited upon the son.

“And you just know where the son got it from don’t you. From good old smiling Ray, the bastard. Who was a good mate of you know-fucking-who, you can guaran-fucking-tee it.”

My head is pounding, my shoulders are knotted in rage and frustration. Colette, my beautiful Colette, makes a phone call and cancels the rest of her day. She takes me home, and loves me for who I am, and in her arms I feel safe finally. She knows who I am and she likes who I am, and it’s a miracle I am profoundly grateful for.

The Prime Minister apologised to the Forgotten Generation on Monday last. He was slick, professional and forthright. He was sorry. They-a culpa. But no compensation. Malcolm Turnbull apologised too, choking up when he hit the tough bit. He may be a policy vacuum, but he’s clearly a good man, a nice man. It brought me to tears too. But there’s one thing that really hurts more than the details. And that’s the numbers.

There were 500,000 of them, those abused and battered and shattered children. Half a million of the poor little mites who went through the hell of the orphanages, the charity homes, the kiddies gulag. But the important point isn’t that number, it’s this. The population of Australia at that time was just 5,000,000.

That’s right, 10% of the population went through those places. That’s a massive figure. And it doesn’t even include all those who were battered and ruined privately, by their own parents, or relatives, or strangers. I reckon that puts the true figure around 15-17% of the population at the time. And that’s got to be one hell of a percentage of all the children in this country at the time.

That’s one huge pile of misery and pain and horror. It’s cast a very long, long, shadow. And it goes on still, although what the numbers are now God knows. But there’s one other number I’d like you to consider. One I don’t have a figure for, perhaps you can imagine one. And that’s the percentage of the people in this country who were on the other end of the stick, dishing out the beatings, the rapes, the crippling pain.

How many? What percentage of the adult population were those who did, and those who turned a blind eye, and those who covered it up, hushed the mouths and stifled the tears? How many those complicit? How many the Forgotten Generation of Swine?

That’s what’s kept me awake for the last two nights.

That’s what makes me weep.

. .

The View From The Bleachers.

It’s strange watching American politics at work from Australia. We have a lot in common, but we’re about as far from the action as it’s possible to be. We both have strong if flawed democracies, both have newish centre-left governments clearing up the mess/heroic achievements left by a decade of right wing governments led by men of minimal political stature. We’re both involved in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to no apparent end. We’re both nations built by immigrants on land wrested from an aboriginal population.

But it’s the differences that are truly enlightening. Australia’s hard-right, paranoid, racist numbskulls have very few members in any political chamber. They have far fewer guns and media demagogues to whip them into a frenzy over ‘death panels’ and the evils of social health policy. In part it’s because many of the ‘big government = big brother’ arguments have long since been settled. That and the Australian trait of not taking patent nonsense and scare mongering for anything other than bullshit. A term much used and much loved by Australians to the extent that it’s almost a national epithet of first resort. That term, and its cohorts ‘bull-shitter’, ‘dickhead’, and ‘wanker’ are genuinely threatening weapons in our national debate.

Our current Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, his own name perilously close to euphony, would be doomed if a significant number of voters decided that this former ‘merchant banker’ was indeed a wanker, and said so publicly. Turnbull is a centre-right populist without any discernible political flavour, so much so that the hard-right end of his own caucus staged a protest walkout in parliament recently, humiliating him in the process with notes being passed furiously back and forth across the benches like the ‘B’ form at a low-end grammar school.

Watching his political emasculation was one of the best and most entertaining times I’ve ever spent in the gallery of the House of Representatives. But it wasn’t enough to kill his career, nor his leadership, despite a previous catastrophic attempt to bring down the government with a pseudo-scandal based on falsified evidence.

True, the right are in disarray; true, they are short of talent, ideas and luck. The Prime Minister, Labor’s Kevin Rudd - knick-named ‘Harry Potter’ for his charisma-less schoolboy earnestness – has had the astonishing good fortune to have prevented Australia from the lemming-like rush into the oblivion of the Global Financial Crisis by spending both wisely and well a $40 billion budget surplus that he inherited from his predecessors (a sizeable chunk of change with a population of only 22 million).

His first move, sure to have been applauded by Republicans, was to give every taxpayer $950 cash to boost the retail sector. It worked. His second move was to do it again. It worked again. The right here gnashed their teeth and harrumphed about fiscal responsibility. Now he’s spending $24 billion on school buildings and maintenance. It’s employing thousands in the building industry. There is no recession in Australia. It’s driving poor Malcolm Turnbull crazy.

The current big ‘socialist’ changes planned by the wicked Labor government for Australia’s national public health system are to extend it to cover dentistry and eyeglasses. The only quibble from the right about the ‘creeping dead hand of evil socialism’ was, once again, to gnash their teeth and harrumph about fiscal responsibility. The principle that the health of the citizenry is the business of its government is just too obvious for it to be a matter of debate here. Only a fool would argue the point. Only a complete lunatic.

That’s why the hysteria, gun-toting closet racism, and mindless hate of the Republican right’s anti-health care legislation follies in the USA are astonishing for Australians. It makes America look like a superpower succumbing to senile dementia, post-Reagan, post-moral leadership of the free world. Can we out here in The Rest Of the World ever have faith in America after this ghastly spectacle? If the USA can’t even hold a civil town-hall meeting, what is there left to believe in?

It’s scarily reminiscent of the political chaos that presaged the breakup of the Soviet Union. Will Carolina breakaway from the Union? Will Georgia see tanks roll in to keep the KKK in line? Will a black President cause Rush Limbaugh to explode in a splatter of body parts, hype and vengeful hyperbole? Will middle America keep its panties and its powder dry?

Here in the Land of Oz, the struggling Tory Turnbull struggles on. He keeps plugging gamely away, trying to look like a Prime Minister and hoping this will somehow enable him to fall into the job, perhaps in a case of mistaken identity.

But if he ever used the kind of lunatic rhetoric of the American Right, as in ‘death panels’, ‘haters of America’, ‘communistic socialists’, ‘liberal Nazis’ etc, he would soon be called a dickhead, then a wanker, and then, the ultimate and terminal term, a ‘no-hoper’. He would be one, and that would be that.

.